


somewhere safe.

by sevensevan



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, literally the most self indulgent thing i've ever written, trans guy oz, transgender character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-08-30 01:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevensevan/pseuds/sevensevan
Summary: Oz moves to Sunnydale when he’s fifteen. He’s new, and short, and weird, and every other Friday he stabs himself in the ass with a hypodermic needle, but most people only know about the first three.Or, the 110% self indulgent trans!Oz oneshot collection that you didn't ask for but I'm giving to you anyway.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is literally so fucking self indulgent??? i project my own trans-ness onto any male character under 5'8" and i was rewatching season three and i just. trans oz. trans oz, man.
> 
> blame my friend ari. they enabled this. i love and support them. ari if you're reading this i love you thank you for letting me scream about trans oz randomly i appreciate you a lot.

They have a long weekend not long after Willow kisses Oz outside the school. Something about a teacher workday, or a teacher group therapy day, or something. Oz invites Willow over to his house while his mom is at his work. His heart pounds uncomfortably in his chest all day, and his hands have been trembling for an hour.

He has to do this. But that doesn’t make it any easier.

“So, what’s up?” Willow asks, settling onto Oz’s bedroom floor across from him, smiling expectantly. It’s that soft smile, the one he’s only ever seen directed at himself and, on rare occasions, ones Willow herself seems unaware of, at Buffy. Oz hesitates. When he told her to come over, he told her he had something to say, but now that he’s sitting here, he has no idea how to say it.

“I’m…” Oz tries, but his words fail him. He stands, running his hands through his hair. Willow stays on the floor, looking up at him. “I was…” he tries again, but again, the next words fail to appear.

“Oz?” Willow says. She’s frowning now, still sitting, still looking up at him. “What’s wrong?” Oz drops his hands from his hair, exhaling heavily. He’s sweating, he realizes. Testosterone comes with a laundry list of fun side effects, one of his personal favorites being the way his fight-or-flight response is on a hair trigger. Although that may just be living in Sunnydale. The town isn’t exactly relaxing.

He’s spiraling.

“Oz?” Willow says again. “Oz, you’re spiraling.” Oz manages a grin.

“I am,” he agrees. “I just…”

He doesn’t know how to say it. He knows the word transsexual, but hates how it feels in his mouth. Transvestite is all wrong, confusing and wrong and full of all the wrong connotations. His doctor, the new one, the one with the fancy degree and dozens of books on psychology, calls him transgender, but he doesn’t know if Willow would know that word.

“I think it’ll be easier to show you than to say it,” Oz says eventually. Willow nods expectantly, brow furrowed in that adorably worried way. Oz takes a moment to stare at her, memorizing how she looks in this moment: sitting in an old t-shirt on his bedroom floor, eyes open and gentle, gazing up at him softly. He holds the image in his mind until he’s sure he’ll never forget it before he allows himself to blink.

Willow is the most beautiful person Oz has ever met, and before he loses his courage, he pulls his t-shirt over his head and drops it to the ground.

His chest is bound with athletic tape. It hurts him less than bandages, and he’s blessed with a small enough chest that it works pretty well. Oz keeps his gaze fixed firmly on the ground, but he can see Willow’s face out of the corner of his eye. He sees the confusion that spreads across it initially, the furrowed brow, the crinkling nose. He sees the sudden realization, the eyes snapping wide, mouth falling open.

Willow stands, stepping towards him, and suddenly Oz has nowhere to look but at her.

“You’re…” she begins.

“I’m a guy,” Oz says, unable to stop the words before they fall out. “I’m a guy, I just…” Willow takes a step closer to him, and Oz takes an involuntary step back. “I wasn’t. Always,” he finishes. It’s vague, but Willow nods like she understands, and takes another step forward. This time, Oz stands his ground.

“But you are now,” Willow says. “In here.” She presses her hand to Oz’s chest, on the skin just above where the tape ends, where his heart is. Oz nods. Willow smiles, and _Jesus_ , there it is again: that Willow-smile that’s just his, soft and affectionate and her nose is crinkling and _oh God_ Oz wants to kiss her.

But…is he still allowed? Maybe Willow is okay with this, maybe she still wants to be friends, maybe she still cares about him. Maybe she’ll even keep his secret from Xander and Buffy and Giles. But he can’t imagine a world where she still wants to kiss him.

(Oz of the pre-Willow days wouldn’t have been able to imagine the existence of Willow or Willow-adjacent persons in the first place. She isn’t the kind of person you can imagine or comprehend.)

Willow leans in and kisses him, still smiling, her lips curving up against his. It feels like their first kiss all over again: the nervous, giddy feeling is back in his stomach (did it ever leave?), she’s smiling into the kiss, he can barely keep from doing the same, his hands are shaking.

The guilt, the heavy darkness in the pit of his stomach, is gone.

“We’re okay?” Oz asks when Willow pulls away. Willow smiles, and her nose crinkles, and Oz just about blacks out right there.

“We’re okay,” she agrees. “Is this why you were all…” Willow makes a vague gesture with her hands.

“Shifty?” Oz says.

“Shifty before we started dating?” Willow finishes. Oz nods.

“I didn’t wanna lie to you,” he says.

“Well, I like honest Oz more than I like shifty Oz,” Willow says. “But I get why you didn’t tell me.” Oz nods, grins, and reaches down to pick up his shirt. He pulls it back on, messing up his hair even more. He turns back to Willow, still grinning, but her smile is gone. His stomach drops abruptly before he realizes she’s looking at him with concern and affection, not disgust.

“What?” Oz says.

“You’re…” Willow reaches out, pressing her fingertips to Oz’s cheek, and suddenly, he becomes aware of the tears streaming down his face. He raises his own hand, touching the other side of his face. His hand comes away wet.

“Oh,” he says, more an exhale than a word. “Happy tears,” he assures her. Willow nods. She looks a little teary-eyed as well.

“Stop it,” she orders him. “If you keep crying I’m gonna cry.”

“All happy tears,” Oz repeats, his smile so wide it’s starting to hurt. Willow steps forward, slipping her arms around him and pulling him into her. Oz goes willingly, leaning into her. He sort of likes being shorter than her. He spends a lot of time wishing he was taller, but with Willow, he’s grateful for the inch she has on him. In some inexplicable way, it makes him feel safe.

Oz almost tells her he loves her right there. It’s too much too soon, but _God_ , it feels right—he feels safe, he feels _real_ —standing there, crying into each other’s shoulders, smiles on both their faces.

One of them leads the other over to Oz’s bed—Oz has no idea who’s leading who; maybe they’re both just stumbling along—and they sit on the edge, Willow’s arm around Oz’s shoulders. She stops crying quickly, but it takes Oz a few minutes to put himself back together again.

“So you…don’t have questions?” Oz says when he stops trembling.

“I have so many questions,” Willow says. “But it seemed like you needed supportive girlfriend Willow more than scientific curiosity Willow right now.” Oz frowns.

“It’s not…” he tries. “I’m not a _scientific curiosity_ , I’m—“

“Oz, baby,” Willow says, cutting him off. “That’s not what I meant.” Oz stares down at the carpet on his bedroom floor. “Oz,” Willow says again. “I just—I just meant I have questions about…y’know, how you have a beard and stuff. But you’re more important than all that. That’s all I meant.” Oz nods. “Hey,” Willow says. She presses her hand to his cheek, lifting his face so he has to meet her gaze. “I didn’t mean to make you upset. I said a dumb thing, huh?”

“Not _dumb_ ,” Oz says. “Just…”

“Clueless.” Oz nods. “I’m probably gonna say a lot of clueless stuff. I’m pretty, y’know, clueless. No clues here. And now I’m babbling, so you can stop me any time you want.”

“I’m enjoying it,” Oz says, smiling. “It’s a very artful kind of babble. And thoughtful.”

“Lies,” Willow says. She tips her head forward, resting her forehead against Oz’s. They sit there for a moment, Oz’s arms around Willow’s waist, her hand on his cheek, foreheads together, eyes closed.

“Hey, Oz?” Willow says eventually.

“Mm?” Oz hums, neither of them moving.

“Must’ve been really scary telling me that, huh?” Oz exhales slowly, shakily. Willow runs her thumb over his cheekbone, and he does his best to memorize the sensation.

“Yeah,” he says.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to tell any of the others.” Oz’s stomach jerks with anxiety.

“Nope,” he says. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t like lying to them, but—“

“It’s okay,” Willow interrupts. “It’s not my secret. And it’s not really lying, is it?” Oz opens his eyes, only to see that Willow’s are already open, looking at him.

“How’s that?” he asks. They’re both nearly whispering. He isn’t sure why, but he sees no reason to get any louder.

“Well, you’re a boy,” Willow says. “You’re a little different, but as long as no one asks any super weirdly specific questions about your childhood, we’re not lying.” Oz smiles.

“Guess not,” he says. “Hey, Wil?” Willow shifts away from him a bit, just enough so that they can make proper eye contact without getting cross eyed. “Thank you.” Willow kisses him, and this time, no one is crying or shaking or anxious. It’s brief, chaste, easy. Peaceful. Safe.

“You’re welcome,” Willow says. She leans up and kisses his forehead. Oz relaxes into the contact, closing his eyes and letting _Willow_ wash over every one of his senses.

He still kind of wants to say he loves her, but one confession is enough for today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i recognize that the whole man-trapped-in-girls-body thing is. Not the universal trans narrative. but this is set in the late nineties and willow is doing her best so we're going with it.
> 
> anyways this thing will probably be updated sporadically, i'll mark it complete when i think i'm done. second chapter just needs editing rn so it might even go up tonight.
> 
> i'm on tumblr @daisys-quake and on twitter @thoughtsintoink. leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> because i have feelings about oz's nail polish and even more feelings about willow painting oz's nails and even More feelings about willow painting trans!oz's nails. i just,,,,,Soft™. it's such a good image, man. i'm gonna make myself cry. lowkey cried in a coffee shop bathroom while taking a break from writing this bc i love willow rosenberg so fucking much.

“I like your nails,” Oz says offhandedly. Willow smiles, and Oz’s heart does that little twisting flip that he’s becoming intimately familiar with in response. It’s Pavlovian, at this point; Willow smiles, and Oz’s brain fires off the serotonin cannons.

“Thanks,” Willow says, looking at her nails. They’re painted green, a shade that reminds Oz of the grass after it rains. Willow turns her attention back to the Scrabble board between them on Oz’s bedroom floor, frowning in concentration. A little crinkle appears between her eyebrows, and Oz barely represses the urge to lean across the board and kiss it. Willow’s eyes flick back and forth between the board and her letters. She’s deep in concentration, but Oz isn’t thinking about the game anymore.

“I used to do that,” he says. Willow glances up at him. “When I was kid, before…I used to paint my nails.” Willow turns her full concentration from the board to Oz.

“Do you miss it?” she asks, immediately picking up on what he isn’t saying. Oz smiles internally. She really does know him inside and out.

“A little,” Oz says. He glances at his own nails, which are bare and a little bit chewed on on his left hand, and a little long and carefully filed on his right. Not like Willow’s, which are well-kept and neatly painted.

“Do you want me to paint yours for you?” Willow asks. Oz’s stomach pitches unpleasantly, but he can’t trace the sensation back to its cause. It’s not the itching sensation he associates with what his doctor calls gender dysphoria, or the fight-or-flight, sweaty feeling he gets from his anxiety. It’s just… _weird._

“I don’t know,” he says. Willow just looks at him, waiting. Oz picks at a hangnail in silence for a moment before speaking. “I guess it scares me.” He had been mistaken for a boy a lot as a child; he had cut all his hair off when he was little—that was one battle his mom didn’t bother fighting; not even seven-year-old Oz would put up with long hair—and wore baggy boy’s clothing. The only time he invariably got called _she_ was when his nails were a different color.

“Oz,” Willow says. “No one is ever going to look at you and think you’re a girl again. No matter what you do to your nails. You don’t have to be afraid of that.” Of _course_ she knows that that’s what he’s worried about. How had he ever managed to lie to her?

“I know,” Oz says, but the words ring hollow. He does know. His brain does, at least. The dark anxiety that lives in his stomach and tells him that he’ll never be a _real_ man thinks otherwise.

“Besides, you’re in a band,” Willow says. “Band guys are allowed to do girly things.” Oz smiles. He can’t exactly argue with that logic.

“An excellent point,” he agrees. He turns his hands over, examining his nails from different angles. “Let’s do it,” he says. “I think my mom has nail polish in the bathroom.”

“Right now?” Willow says. Oz looks up at her.

“Right now,” he says. Willow smiles, pushing herself up off the floor and to her feet, leaving the Scrabble board abandoned on the bedroom floor.

“Let’s do it!” she says. Oz stands and follows her to the bathroom. He hovers in the doorway, weird half-fear churning in his gut, as Willow digs through the mirror cabinet, pulling out a variety of small glass bottles. Eventually, there’s a little row of them on the counter.

“It looks like our options are pink, red, green, black, and this…sparkly one,” Willow says, tapping the lid of each as she speaks. “Sparkly? How old’s your mom again?”

“That’s for her to know and the rest of us to question,” Oz says. He considers the row of bottles. “I pick Door C.”

“Black?” Willow says, picking up the bottle in question. Oz nods. “An excellent choice, Mr. Osbourne,” she says, in what’s probably intended to be a game show host voice. “C’mon.” They head back to his bedroom. “Sit,” Willow says, pointing at Oz’s bed. Oz sits, leaning back against the headboard and stretching his legs out. Willow sits next to him, settling her own legs across his lap. It’s not a new position for them—Willow has a bit of a thing for sitting on his lap—but every time, it makes Oz’s stomach flutter pleasantly. Willow is the most tactile person Oz has ever met, and he hadn’t realized just how much he was missing physical contact until he had a constant source of it.

“Hand,” Willow says, holding out her own and wiggling her fingers insistently. Oz holds out his left hand, and Willow takes it in hers, holding it still. She sets the nail polish on the bedside table, unscrewing the cap and brushing the excess nail polish off on the lip of the bottle. She holds the brush over Oz’s index finger and hesitates there, looking up at Oz. Looking for permission, for one more confirmation that this is okay.

Oz smiles and nods. Willow smiles back and looks back down, drawing the brush across Oz’s nail. It leaves a thick black stripe in its wake. Oz watches, strangely fascinated, as Willow paints each nail on his left hand with short, efficient, practiced strokes.

“There we go,” Willow says softly when she’s done with his left hand. She blows lightlyon his nails, and the sensation makes Oz shiver. “You want your other hand too?” Oz nods. He offers Willow his right hand, setting his left on his leg and spreading his fingers out, careful to keep the paint off his jeans. He barely registers her painting his other hand, preoccupied with staring at his left. He had expected that familiar feeling of disconnection, of _this-isn’t-my-body_ , the thing that lives in his stomach roaring out unhappily, but he doesn’t have it. His hands still look like his, like they belong to him.

“All done,” Willow announces quietly, jolting Oz out of his reverie. She releases his hand, and Oz holds them both up, looking at his nails. “Good?” Willow asks. Oz looks over at her. She’s chewing her lip nervously. “I saw rubbing alcohol in the bathroom if you—“

“No,” Oz interrupts, smiling. “No, I wanna keep it.” Willow smiles.

“Yeah?” she says.

“Yeah,” Oz says. “Thank you.” Willow leans in.

“Anytime,” she says before she kisses him. It goes on a bit longer than Oz expected, and he pulls back.

“Careful,” he says. “I don’t wanna get nail polish on your sweater.” Willow blushes.

“Right,” she says. “Sorry, I got—carried away.” Oz kisses her forehead, that spot between her eyebrows where a crinkle appears sometimes.

“It’s okay,” he says. Willow moves her legs off his lap, and Oz mourns the loss of contact for a moment, until she curls up against his side, throwing an arm across his stomach.

“R’you gonna wear it to school?” Willow asks, her voice muffled by Oz’s side. Oz carefully wraps an arm around her shoulders, keeping his nails away from her clothes, his palm flat on her shoulder. He holds up his free hand, examining it.

“Yeah,” he says. “You’re right. I don’t have anything to be afraid of.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have more planned but if you wanna see a specific episode/scene/whatever with trans!oz leave me a comment or shoot me a message on tumblr or twitter; i'd be happy to write it. i'm on tumblr @daisys-quake and on twitter @thoughtsintoink. leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, having a productive weekend? unheard of. nah i found this on my hard drive and finished it so here ya go.

Oz gets to the library early that night.

He’s been able to feel the full moon all day. Even at noon, with the sun high overhead and not a cloud in sight, it made him anxious. The sunset and the change are still half an hour away, and Willow isn’t even there yet, but Oz locks himself in the cage anyway, pacing back and forth. He feels like there’s something crawling under his skin, and he can’t shake the nightmare image in his head of fur growing between the layers of his skin, waiting to push its way out.

Oz is about to settle down in the corner when he sees it. A framed photo, lying face down, tucked behind a stack of papers on top of a filing cabinet. It’s either been excellently hidden or totally forgotten, and either way, it’s guaranteed to be interesting.

Oz pulls the photo out, flipping it over. For a moment, he’s not sure what he’s looking at. It’s black and white, faded, and wrinkled beneath the glass. The glass itself is covered in dust, like it sat behind those papers untouched for months before someone pushed it over. Oz reaches out with his sleeve, wiping the dust off the glass.

The lighting in the photo is dim. It seems to be in a bar of some sort, as the two people in it are sitting in a round booth, drinks in front of them. Most of the photo is taken up by two boys, somewhere between their teens and adulthood, maybe nineteen or twenty. One of them is wearing glasses, big, wire-rimmed things.

They’re kissing, and it’s only as he hears the library doors swing open that Oz realizes that the boy in the glasses is a much younger Giles.

“Oz?” Giles says as he walks into the library. “You’re here early.”

“Yeah,” Oz says, shoving the picture between his overshirt and his t-shirt. “Um, full moon and all. Fuller than usual, I think. I feel all twitchy.” Giles nods sympathetically.

“Well, Willow should be here soon, and I only have a bit more to do before I leave. I know you don’t like others…being…” he trails off, frowning at Oz. “Do you have something in your shirt?”

“No!” Oz says. “No, it’s nothing! It’s…” He pauses. It’s _not_ nothing. Giles isn’t… _out_ or…whatever word happens to apply in this situation. The point is, people don’t know this about him or his past, and Oz can only assume that that’s because he doesn’t want people to know.

And now Oz knows.

“It’s…this, actually,” Oz says. He holds out the photo. Giles takes a moment to register what he’s looking at, his eyebrows drawing together before his eyes fly wide in the Giles equivalent of fainting in shock.

“Oh,” Giles says softly. He takes off his glasses, rubbing them clean with the sleeve of his jacket.

“I didn’t mean to,” Oz says, feeling the need to explain. “I was just—it was there and I—I didn’t want to—“ He stops, unable to find the words to explain himself.

Giles unlocks the cage, and Oz passes the photo to him through the open door. He closes it again, slipping his fingers through the wires, which are much too close together for his wolf hands to fit through, and locking the cage once more.

“Oz, what you’re seeing here is…” Giles pushes his glasses up his nose. “Well, my past has come back to haunt me before, and I’m hardly proud of a lot of it. I—“

“Giles,” Oz interrupts. “You don’t have to explain.” Giles blinks at him. “Look, I don’t—“ Oz pushes at his hair. “I don’t have a problem with it,” he says, though it seems woefully insufficient. “The picture…you don’t have to act like that’s not you. And no one could fake the way you look at Miss Calendar, and that’s you, too. Alright? You don’t have to make yourself into two different people. People’ve got lots of little pieces that you can’t take apart, even if they don’t fit together. Like when you’re doing a jigsaw and you put the wrong piece down and then you can’t get it back out and if you try you tear all the little layers of cardboard apart and…” _And I think that’s Willow’s spirit, talking through me_. “The point is, you can be a lot of things at once and sometimes you can’t take them apart. And you don’t have to try.” The room is utterly silent for a moment. Giles takes his glasses off again, surreptitiously wiping at his eyes as he does so.

“Well,” he says as he puts them back on. “As much as that was almost entirely composed of incomprehensible metaphor, the sentiment is very much appreciated.” Oz relaxes just a bit, leaning against the inside of his cage. “Would you be willing to…not tell anyone?”

“Of course,” Oz says. “But I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it.” He reconsiders. “Xander might…be Xander.” Giles smiles.

“He does tend to do that,” he agrees. “Thank you, Oz.”

“Any time.” Giles steps away, carrying the photo towards his office. “Hey, Giles?” He turns around again, looking at Oz. “I, um…” Oz looks away. “The reason I don’t like having anyone other than Willow around when I shift is…I’m, um, I’m transgender.” It’s the first time outside of therapy that he’s said the word out loud, applied it to himself. It’s shocking how easy it feels in his mouth, not scorching, branding the way every other word he’s used always has. “I’m…I was born a girl.” Giles considers that for a moment, face unreadable.

“And Willow treats you well?” he asks. “She understands?”

“Yeah,” Oz says. “God, yeah, she’s…” He doesn’t even try. He got a perfect SAT score, he has the largest vocabulary of anyone he’s ever met, and he could try for the next seventy years and never find the words to describe Willow. She’s not the kind of person who can be put into something as mortal and clumsy as language.

“Good,” Giles says. “I imagine you don’t want me telling anyone, either. Xander may _be_ _Xander_.” Oz smiles. “Oz, I hope you didn’t…you didn’t feel obligated to tell me that, did you? Because of—“ Giles holds up the photograph awkwardly.

“No,” Oz says. “No, I…it felt kind of good. It feels good, having someone else know.” Giles adjusts his glasses, smiling.

“I’m glad,” he says. “Good luck tonight, Oz.”

“Thanks.” Giles retreats to his office to gather his things, and Oz returns to the corner of his cage. The wolf is still crawling under his skin, but he feels less anxious than he had only minutes ago. It feels good to have someone else know.

It feels good to have _Giles_ know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> check out my fuffy fics if that's your jam. i'm on tumblr @daisys-quake and on twitter @thoughtsintoink, leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed.


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